FF Versus XIII reports "are false"

Square Enix has rubbished suggestions that Final Fantasy Versus XIII is on hold.

"Reports that development for Final Fantasy Versus XIII is on hold are false," the publisher said in a statement passed on to Eurogamer.

"The truth of the situation is that when free, some staff from the Versus team have been helping with the XIII team on development of Final Fantasy XIII. Development for both titles is continuing as originally scheduled."

That rather significantly contradicts translations of game director Tetsuya Nomura's comments in a Famitsu article, where he reportedly used the words "on hold" and said "the entire Versus team is helping to finish Final Fantasy XIII".

Along with Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy Agito XIII, Versus makes up a three-game "compilation" of titles marking the next, and next-generation, step forward in the famous Square RPG series.

Not much is really known about it other than what's been seen in trailers, but Nomura has previously evoked Kingdom Hearts when searching for comparisons. Speaking to Eurogamer last May, Nomura said it would "examine the humanity of the characters in this game" and distinguish itself from the FF games' traditional fantasy worlds.

"In Versus I'm trying to propose new vision of how a Final Fantasy game can be. The game's going to be more human than the science-fiction caricature we so often see. It will focus around current world events - in that sense it's darker," he explained at the time.

It's also still happily in development, or so Square Enix says, despite the inevitable bias towards getting FF XIII - a banner game for both its publisher and platform holder Sony - out of the door as quickly as possible. Hopefully we'll hear more about its progress at E3.